Make your own Gameboy: Idea Phase

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

Intro
Hmm... Where to start specifically with this topic.... I guess a natural place to start is why make this thread.

First off, I wanted to keep track of my progress on an idea of mine (more in a bit), but at the same time be able to get feed back from people given this is topic. My idea is not very original, but its a mountain of work ahead of me. The title sort of gives it away for me, but the general idea is I want to develop a handheld game. I do not mean to recreate the gameboy by any means. I mean to develop a platform/system from which I might develop several games for on my own time.

What I want can be divided into two main ideas: hardware and software. Before I can get to constructing the game itself I need to give it flesh and bone. Here are some of my ideas on both for the moment.

Hardware
-Enclosure
-Microprocessor
-Sound and volume control
-A directional pad
-Graphical LCD
-Buttons (how many to be determined)

The main problem about thinking to software right now is without ironing out my tool kit I am not certain what sort of game I could try developing. Given my initial work into messing around with the Arduino Due I am going to be developing things based on this microprocessor. I believe it to have enough OMPH to handle what I believe I will need doing. Additionally, I have already been putting in work on developing some code to control an ST7565 which is an LCD controller. To my understanding, I can apply this work I am doing to several different LCDs provided they use the ST7565 controller. Anyway, the enclosure I expect to develop myself by eventually learning 3D printing and passing it off to some company to fabricate for me.

My problems right now are I have NO idea how to go about figuring out how to control things I have taken for granted such as making sound, a directional pad, and getting adequate buttons. If anyone has any recommendations where to start it would be appreciated.

I have done some prior work into figuring out how to get a piezzo buzzer working. Having made a couple of... sounds by controlling frequency of a digital pin (PWM or a timer and saying on/off a lot) and setting the duration. However, I am not really certain how to go about making more... traditional game music of the old generation.

I was hoping there would be a manufactured directional pad I might buy and interface with, but to no avail from my searches. It seems a good one I would have to rip off from an old system or figure out a way to manipulate a 3D printed part. Similar situation with the buttons.

 

[Minato]

All this sounds very interesting, unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to actually get stuff like this running. My teacher has brought up the arduino board multiple times and showed us what could be done with it, but I never actually had a class going indepth with it unfortunately.

Like you mentioned, using parts of an existing controller or using a 3D printer sounds like good ideas.

This whole thing sounds like a pretty fun project. Sounds difficult though if this will be all self-taught.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

What sort of game should be made?

@ Minato :
If I wanted to make a game platform and game without much prior knowledge on several of the things I spoke about I think this would be a multi-year project. There is a ton of information about this I sort of have a jump start on: programming, circuit analysis, knowledge on electrical parts, printed circuit board design, and computer-aided design. This is more of a first time taking all of this knowledge and applying it to one thing at once. Many of these things I did for classes or some of it for a job.

The biggest self-taught stuff for me I think is figuring out how to basically become an artist. A big eye opener was when I wanted to get a song playing. What is a note? What is the tempo? Define a beat? How do you read sheet music? Why does an A4 (440Hz) sound different between instruments? Once I identify all this stuff how do I replicated it in electronics? What parts do I need to use? What is meant by a resonant frequency of a piezzo buzzer? How do you control volume?

Once I have done all of that I still need to create actual music. Then, moving onto how to create sprites x.x

But, Arduino is a good project idea from whoever started this whole thing. They make everything open source. Its affordable. Plenty of tutorials. Only complaint is maybe they abstract too much stuff away. But, the benefit is with open source you can learn what is going on.